just like it says in the Bible,
akudim nekudim uvrudim
. Or to put it in plain language, like an abcess on a blister on a boil.”
“Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’ve hit the nail on the head. And if you think the boil and the blister are bad, wait until you hear about the abcess.”
In a word, we stayed up gabbing half the night. By then I was dizzy from all his wild stories about the thousands of rubles he had juggled as though he were Brodsky. All night long my head was in a whirl: Yehupetz … gold imperials … Brodsky … Menachem Mendl and his mother-in-law … It wasn’t until the next morning, though, that he finally got to the point. What was the point? It was, said Menachem Mendl, that since money was so scarce in Yehupetz that you couldn’t even give away your goods, “You, Reb Tevye, have a chance not only to make a nice killing but also to help save my life, I mean literally to raise me from the dead!”
“And you,” I said to him, “are talking like a child. Are you really so foolish as to believe that I’m sitting on Yehupetz’s millions? I only wish the two of us could earn in a year a tenth of what I’d need to be half as rich as Brodsky.”
“Of course,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me that. But what makes you think I have such big sums in mind? Let me have a hundred rubles and in a couple of days I’ll turn them into two hundred for you, into three hundred, into six hundred, into seven. In fact, I’ll make it an even thousand.”
“That may very well be,” I said. “All things are possible. But do you know when they are? When there’s a hundred in the first place. When there isn’t, it’s
begapoy yovoy uvegapoy yeytsey
. Do you know whatRashi has to say about that? That if you invest a fever, you’ll get consumption for your profit.”
“Come, come,” he says to me. “A hundred rubles, Reb Tevye, you’re sure to find. With your business, your reputation, touch wood …”
“What’s my reputation got to do with it?” I ask. “A reputation is a wonderful thing to have, but would you like to know something? It’s all I do have, because Brodsky has all the rest. If you must know exactly, it may be that I could squeeze together somewhere in the neighborhood of roughly more or less a hundred rubles, but I can also think of a hundred different ways to make them disappear again, the first of which is marrying off my eldest daughter …”
“But that’s just it!” he says. “Listen to me! When will you have another opportunity, Reb Tevye, to invest a hundred rubles and wind up, God willing, with enough money to marry off every one of your daughters and still have plenty to spare?” And for the next three hours he’s off on another serenade about how he can turn one ruble into three and three into ten. “The first thing you do,” he says, “is take your hundred and buy ten whatchumacallits with it.”(That wasn’t his word, I just don’t remember what he called them.) “You wait a few days for them to go up, and then you send off a telegram with an order to sell and buy twice as much. Then you wait a few more days and send a telegram again. Before you know it, your hundred’s worth two, your two hundred four, your four hundred eight, and your eight a thousand and six. It’s the damnedest thing! Why, I know people who just the other day were shop clerks in Yehupetz without a pair of shoes on their feet; today they live in mansions with walls to keep out beggars and travel to the baths in Germany whenever their wives get a stomachache. They ride around town in rubber-wheeled droshkies—why, they don’t even know you anymore!”
Well, so as not to make a short story long, he gave me such an itch to be rich that it wasn’t any laughing matter. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I told myself. Maybe he’s really meant to be your good angel. What makes you think you’re any worse than those shop clerks in Yehupetz who are living on easy street?
akudim nekudim uvrudim
. Or to put it in plain language, like an abcess on a blister on a boil.”
“Reb Tevye,” he says, “you’ve hit the nail on the head. And if you think the boil and the blister are bad, wait until you hear about the abcess.”
In a word, we stayed up gabbing half the night. By then I was dizzy from all his wild stories about the thousands of rubles he had juggled as though he were Brodsky. All night long my head was in a whirl: Yehupetz … gold imperials … Brodsky … Menachem Mendl and his mother-in-law … It wasn’t until the next morning, though, that he finally got to the point. What was the point? It was, said Menachem Mendl, that since money was so scarce in Yehupetz that you couldn’t even give away your goods, “You, Reb Tevye, have a chance not only to make a nice killing but also to help save my life, I mean literally to raise me from the dead!”
“And you,” I said to him, “are talking like a child. Are you really so foolish as to believe that I’m sitting on Yehupetz’s millions? I only wish the two of us could earn in a year a tenth of what I’d need to be half as rich as Brodsky.”
“Of course,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me that. But what makes you think I have such big sums in mind? Let me have a hundred rubles and in a couple of days I’ll turn them into two hundred for you, into three hundred, into six hundred, into seven. In fact, I’ll make it an even thousand.”
“That may very well be,” I said. “All things are possible. But do you know when they are? When there’s a hundred in the first place. When there isn’t, it’s
begapoy yovoy uvegapoy yeytsey
. Do you know whatRashi has to say about that? That if you invest a fever, you’ll get consumption for your profit.”
“Come, come,” he says to me. “A hundred rubles, Reb Tevye, you’re sure to find. With your business, your reputation, touch wood …”
“What’s my reputation got to do with it?” I ask. “A reputation is a wonderful thing to have, but would you like to know something? It’s all I do have, because Brodsky has all the rest. If you must know exactly, it may be that I could squeeze together somewhere in the neighborhood of roughly more or less a hundred rubles, but I can also think of a hundred different ways to make them disappear again, the first of which is marrying off my eldest daughter …”
“But that’s just it!” he says. “Listen to me! When will you have another opportunity, Reb Tevye, to invest a hundred rubles and wind up, God willing, with enough money to marry off every one of your daughters and still have plenty to spare?” And for the next three hours he’s off on another serenade about how he can turn one ruble into three and three into ten. “The first thing you do,” he says, “is take your hundred and buy ten whatchumacallits with it.”(That wasn’t his word, I just don’t remember what he called them.) “You wait a few days for them to go up, and then you send off a telegram with an order to sell and buy twice as much. Then you wait a few more days and send a telegram again. Before you know it, your hundred’s worth two, your two hundred four, your four hundred eight, and your eight a thousand and six. It’s the damnedest thing! Why, I know people who just the other day were shop clerks in Yehupetz without a pair of shoes on their feet; today they live in mansions with walls to keep out beggars and travel to the baths in Germany whenever their wives get a stomachache. They ride around town in rubber-wheeled droshkies—why, they don’t even know you anymore!”
Well, so as not to make a short story long, he gave me such an itch to be rich that it wasn’t any laughing matter. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I told myself. Maybe he’s really meant to be your good angel. What makes you think you’re any worse than those shop clerks in Yehupetz who are living on easy street?
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